Crogai is an open source software for simulating crowd behavior of agents with AI on a 3-dimensional virtual terrain. Some of the features include reproduction, predators, evolution and mob behavior. The current release is at version 0.2, so we can probably expect many more features to come in the future.

Ron Weiss, and his colleagues at Princeton University have managed to program living cells by engineering the plasmid section of DNA which is read by the cell as a set of instructions to produce protein under certain conditions. Early experiments show E. coli bacteria programmed to emit red or green fluorescent light and self configuration into simple shapes (image 1, 2, 3).

Michael Chang’s ambitious project, Morphology, under the supervision of Casey Reas, attempts to create a program in Processing through which morphogenesis, emergence and evolution of swimming agents could be observed. Although the project lacks in having conclusive software to explore some of the processes involved in evolution, the website offers a great deal of insight into the creation of such a program through the detailed description of the software sketches leading up the the final applet.

NASA is funding development of carbon nanotube power cables or quantam wires at Rice University which are 10 times more conductive and 1/6th the weight of copper wire. Quantam wires will replace the copper wires in space shuttles with potential applications varying from space elevator tethers to flat panel displays.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) has annotated 11,000 hours of underwater video footage from over 300 dives the institute conducts each year. The footage is manually scanned for sea creatures and annotated by experts through VARS (Video Annotation and Reference System) and is available to the public for free through the VARS Query system. A new automated system under development called AVED (Automatic Visual Event Detection) uses neural network technology to process the frames . At the moment the current system is capable of highlighting potential objects of interest, automating a very time consuming step. The goal for MBARI is to have an autonomous real-time annotating system.

Bitmirror by takes a live video feed and reconstructs the footage as a realtime ASCII graphic animation. The installation also accepts user inputs such as sound and movement to distort the mirror image in a swarm-like behavior. Check out the demo applet.

By manipulating the written bits of digital media, the Molecular Media Project remixes images, music, and video by reorganizing the digital sequence at the nano-scale. Take for example, the remixing of digital music by growing spores of fungus on CDs. The semi-controlled fungus growth refracts the laser as it reads the information, creating different audio effects. From the description you would expect the digital manipulation to sound like a scratched CD, but surprisingly the sounds can overlap and resequence into something bearable.

Living in Paper offers an extensive introduction into “papercrete”, an innovative construction material currently going through testing. The construction material’s performance has several advantages over concrete and uses recycled paper from just about any source as the aggregate.